Beadle's Dime Novels No. 127: Bald Eagle — page 97: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AT LAST. 99 by step, the scenes of my story. My guide was an ancient man, whose memory extended back to the days of the “ Great War,” as he called the struggle for our Independence, and who pointed out to me the places historic in our annals, and made interesting as the last resting-place of the Bald Eagle. For several years after the close of the War of Indepen- dence, the remnants of the trive of Ramapaugh returned to the valley for the purpose of burying their dead, and to cele- brate also some of the ancient festivals of their people. Slowly they dwindled away, till one solitary man, bent with years, ' returned to lay his bones with his fathers. He was taciturn and Jane:y—avoided companionship, and supplied his simple wants by trapping and fishing. Under a shoulder of the mountain, where the stream rested itself in the shadow of the forest and rock, he built his. cabin —a stern old warrior, scarred in many a battle. But he was very gentle, though unwilling to talk, and shunning observation. Said my guide, “ We called him old Ramapaugh, and some- times the Bald Hagle. He was a perfect Jove in aspect. Do you see that rock there, rising up naked against the sky? I have seen old Ramapaugh seated there by the hour—his blan- ket folded around him, his eagle tuft waving i the air, and he as motionless and as sharply defined as the rock on which he sat.” “ What a yrand statue he must have made there against the sky !’ I exctaimed, “the eagles whecling above him, the river flowing beneath, and the old woods sweeping olf in the dis- tance. It was the genius of his people—silent, stern, gazing with an eye of rebuke upon the miserable interlopers who had robbed them of their heritage.” “ Byven so,” returned my guide. “ One day it was remarked there was no smoke from the hut of Ramapaugh—he had gone to hunt, it was thought—the next day it was the same. He might not have returned—Ramapaugh did not like any intermeddling. But when the fourth day came, and there was still no smoke curling like a stream of incense through the trees, up the side of the rock, heavenward, we went in a body to learn what it should mean. ‘The door of the cabin was closed; green branches were spread upon the floor—a pipe, inverted, was laid across the threshold—upon a pile of sking COMmicooks.Goml